Thursday, June 30, 2011

Sadanand Dhume on Lieven's book

Sadanand Dhume in the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Lieven is unusually enamored of the army, which he calls "the only Pakistani institution that works as it is officially meant to." In itself, this observation would be unremarkable—the army gobbles up more than double the federal outlays for health and education combined—if it didn't shade into a peculiar adoption of much of the army's worldview as his own. That's the defense Pakistan's military is employing as it's besieged by civil society and by outsiders for its apparent collusion with terrorists.
....
This exaggerated concern for all things military gives Mr. Lieven's book the tone of a love letter to a general in Rawalpindi, the country's military capital.
 Dhume points out that as one holding on to the status quo, Lieven does not have Pakistan's bests interests at heart either.

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